


another spring will come

by Cxnfiscated



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff and Angst, I love them so much, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Post-Kerberos Mission, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Sharing a Bed, Smitten Adam, Smitten Shiro (Voltron), Stargazing, we were ROBBED
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-29 04:26:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16256636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cxnfiscated/pseuds/Cxnfiscated
Summary: Shiro had found that Adam did that a lot, carve out spaces for himself wherever he pleased and once he had fitted himself in, there was no way that the reality where he wasn’t exactly right there was possible.Those thoughts and a plethora of other lovesick musings clouded his mind and tinged the world in front of his eyes a rosy pink. The happiness in his body grew as flowers did ─ it grew towards the sun, grew towards Adam and clung to him like a lifeline.





	another spring will come

**Author's Note:**

> Hi hello! This snippet is Bday gift for a lovely friend of mine!! (I love u AD!)  
> Go send them some love!  
> Their Twitter: @Trashcan_kid  
> Their Tumblr: @gesu-ko.tumblr.com

**_Spring_ **

_ And just like nature itself, our love began to rise and bloom _

 

This had to be a dream. There was no way that what he was feeling was real. Things like these didn’t happen to people like him, people like him didn’t get to be this lucky. The sunlight of a spring morning spilled into the bedroom.  _ Shiro’s room _ , Adam’s sleepy brain added when his eyes fell on a blurry heap on the floor that vaguely resembled Shiro’s workout gear. 

 

His senses roused from their slumber one at a time. He was in bed, the sheets too light and the mattress too soft to be his. It felt like it was early but the sun had already risen so they had probably just slept in for once.

 

_ They. _

 

Adam slowly turned his head to the right and was met with Shiro’s broad back, expenses of creamy, soft skin spanning hard coils of muscle. He lifted his head and squinted to look at him better ─ he would never grow tired of looking at Shiro ─ but his eyesight wasn’t having his efforts at al. The blurry shapes in front of his eyes refused to sharpen, no matter how much squinting he did, so he sighed and admitted defeat.

 

Just laying there would be enough anyway. His limbs were still weighed down by the remains of sleep refusing to let go of him completely. For once, he didn’t fight them. He had nowhere to be, both Shiro and he had moved heaven and hell during the week to keep their weekend free, and he was right where he wanted to be.

 

The mattress dipped and the sheets ruffled when Shiro turned to face him. Adam opened his eyes to one of the most beautiful sights in the world. Shiro met his gaze through sleepy haziness clouding his eyes and shot him a soft smile.

 

Adam’s heart flew open like a door torn from its hinges, as he returned the smile.

 

“Good morning,” Shiro whispered, his voice rough and slow. It ran down Adam’s skin like sticky sweet honey and settled deep inside his chest. 

 

“Good morning,” was his answer, just as lazy and sleepy as Shiro’s.

 

Adam took in Shiro’s face as he pulled the rest of his mind from the depths of sleep. How the strong lines, like the arch of his eyebrows and the angular lines of his jaw, were softened now that he was more asleep than awake. How truly happy he looked now that the stress of their upcoming exams couldn’t reach them anymore.

 

Shiro finally managed to fully open his eyes and promptly snorted when he looked at Adam. 

“What?” Adam feigned indignity, even went so far as crossing his arms and averting his eyes. But Shiro didn’t let that fool him.

 

“Your bedhead is adorable.”

 

That was all it took. All it took to send Adam’s heart reeling with happiness, all it took to make him melt on the spot and to piece him back together. A blush crept up his chest until it settled on his cheeks and Adam prayed that his dark complexion would hide the colour rising. It didn’t.

 

Shiro, still smiling in that way that made Adam want to melt, reached out for said bedhead but before his hand met Adam’s unruly curls he hesitated. Left both of them on the precipice of warmth and intimacy, unsure whether they were daring enough to actually fall. He looked at Adam, unsure whether he would follow if Shiro dared to take the leap.

 

Adam’s heart was hammering in his chest when he reached up, gripped his hand and placed it in his hair. “It’s just as soft as it looks, I promise.” In some universe, those words might have been a joke, but they came out breathless and high-pitched, so this wasn’t one of them.

 

That didn’t really matter in the end, though. Shiro beamed at him and began playing with Adam’s hair, cooing at his softness while poking fun at the fact that it did look like a rat’s nest. Adam poked him the ribs for that one and a few moments of wrangling, victorious pokes, almost panicked laughter exploding from their mouths later, they ended up in each other’s arms.

 

Wide-eyed, red-faced with laughter still spilling from their lips. And they stayed that way too. Both finally at ease now that the first barrier of hesitation had been torn down. Now that they knew that  _ this _ ─ whatever this new thing was ─ was okay. They could do things like that now.

 

And so they did.

  
  


**_Summer_ **

_ our summer was a love letter addressed to life itself _

 

The days of exams had passed and wouldn’t come back until green leaves turned into the colour of sunsets. 

 

Shiro closed his eyes when the hot air from outside the car caressed his face. Deep in the space between his ribs, something uncoiled. Finally got to relax after being forced into tension. His eyes wandered over to Adam in the driver’s seat, both of his hands on the steering wheel and caught onto his soft smile. 

 

“Don’t look at me like that, I have to focus on the road,” Adam warned him, keeping his eyes ahead to prove a point.”

“Stop looking like that then.” Their exchange was old and familiar and already carried traces of continued use but they had grown to love it too much to let it go. (Just like Shiro had started loving Adam too much to let him go.)

 

So Adam humoured him. “What do I look like?” He still didn’t face Shiro but there were tiny hints of red on his cheeks, almost completely hidden by his complexion now even darker because they were finally seeing the sun again.

 

“Absolutely beautiful,” Shiro said, as cheesy as it was. Adam smiled even though he probably didn’t want to. “Shut up.” Shiro closed his eyes and leaned back into the passenger seat. There was nothing he could wish for now. For the first time in forever, he truly felt happy. 

 

And, to his surprise, the feeling lasted.

 

It grew stronger when his parents embraced him and Adam for the first time, grew stronger when he saw Adam blending into the scenery of his hometown like he was the piece that had been missing for the entirety of his life. 

Shiro had found that Adam did that a lot, carve out spaces for himself wherever he pleased and once he had fitted himself in, there was no way that the reality where he  _ wasn’t _ exactly right there was possible.

 

Those thoughts and a plethora of other lovesick musings clouded his mind and tinged the world in front of his eyes a rosy pink. The happiness in his body grew as flowers did ─ it grew towards the sun, grew towards Adam and clung to him like a lifeline.

 

Their days back at home were spent at the beach. Laying on the sands he had known for his entire life and playing in the water that answered to him like family welcoming him home. They spent their entire day there, floating in the water, sharing ice cream like the lovesick couples in the movies he used to watch as a kid.

 

It was cheesy ─ beyond cheesy really ─ but he  _ could  _ do that now. Somehow he now had someone who had learned to speak his language of love. Someone who knew that his smile meant “ _ kiss me”  _ and that the other one meant “ _ I love you”. _ Someone who knew that _ “I love you”  _ wasn't always verbal, that Shiro saw declarations of love in actions and learned to find them in Shiro’s actions too.

 

They laid down next to each other as the sun set and the sky shone like cotton candy and continued to lay next to each other as darkness settled around them like a blanket and all the stars in the universe twinkled down at them.

 

“Shiro?” Adam asked and turned his head to face him. Shiro hummed and drowsily blinked at him. “I never asked you why you wanted to become a pilot.” Adam actually sounded slightly put out by that, his brows forming a crease on his forehead. Like the fact that there were things he didn’t know, that there were things he hadn’t thought to asked about, genuinely annoyed him.

 

Shiro shouldn’t be surprised like that. Adam’s eyes shone with the same curiosity he always carried when he found questions he didn’t know the answer to and his mouth was set with the same determination not to accept the status quo.

 

And so Shiro eased his annoyance. “I always wanted to go to the stars as a child. Back then I didn’t know that you actually needed a spacecraft, a suit and around 500 hours of Iverson yelling at you to get there.” Shiro huffed out a small laugh when his eyes went back up to the stars.

 

He lost himself in memory for a moment, nothing but the wide sky, the rush of waves and the sand beneath him. It looked like if he  _ just  _ reached up he could touch them, be coated in their stardust and come back carrying a part of space inside of him.

 

“And that wish persisted?” Adam brought him back, driven by curiosity.

 

“You can say it did. I’ve always wanted to go to space even though my muscles decided that wouldn’t be happening.” Shiro put on a small and sad excuse for a smile. It didn’t matter what his face looked like, it was dark and Adam wasn’t wearing his glasses so he shouldn’t see his face anyway. 

 

Adam, however, did exactly that. He reached out to cup his cheek with his hand, his thumb trying to find the corners of his mouth by touch and smoothing them out.

 

“Don’t make that face.”

 

“You can’t even see my face,” Shiro talked back, just for the sake of it and he could actually feel Adam rolling his eyes.

 

“Shut-” Adam actually went the extra mile to cover his mouth with his hand, a gesture so terribly extra and silly. But Shiro’s heart turned into a gooey mess anyway.

 

Adam opened his mouth and Shiro knew that what would come out would be one version of the same thousand motivational speeches, he had heard throughout his time at the Garrison. He was wrong though.

 

“I love you Shiro and no matter what you end up doing, I’ll be there to support you along the way.” His eyes reflected the stars back at Shiro when he reached down to grip his face with both of his hands. He pulled Adam up with him as he rose until both of them were kneeling in the sand.

 

Shiro whispered his answer. An  _ I love you too _ that was nothing more than a rush of air painted in intimacy. Then their lips met, again and again.

 

Until they were nothing more than two breathless, lovesick fools beneath the night sky.

  
  


**_Autumn_ **

_ our love inhaled deeply and released its grand finale in a proud fanfare _

 

Adam had a question burning in the depths of his mind. It was thriving and growing, turning itself into an inevitability. Fate and the stars conspiring together just to spite him. It was written in love but coloured in dread.

 

_ What if he says no? What if he doesn’t want me? _ Doubts upon doubts, that followed him to the depths of sleep and rose when he did, that clung to his skin and whispered in his ears. They fed on his insecurity and thrived on his hesitation. 

 

But when he made moves to abolish his uncertainty, the stars, the strings of fate or whatever there may be, weren’t having it.

 

Adam leaned over the tray of potato gratin, a comfort food both of him and Shiro had discovered for themselves, when Shiro stumbled in their shared kitchen. Yes,  _ their  _ kitchen _. _

 

Adam turned at the sound and took in Shiro’s appearance. Exhaustion and fatigue sat on his shoulders and pulled the lines of his face into a frown. 

“What’s going on?” Adam asked, throwing the baking gloves on the counter. 

Shiro dragged his body over to where he was standing and let out a groan. Adam now well-versed in the high arts of speaking Shiro, lifted his arms and let Shiro collapse into his embrace.

 

“That bad?” He asked, his fingers absentmindedly playing with Shiro’s forelock. Shiro’s grip tightened. “Worse.” 

 

Adam sighed at that and began to pepper his temple with feathery, light kisses. They stayed like that for a while. It was almost like recharging. Taking off worries that existed outside of their tiny apartment like layers of jackets and coats until they were finally comfortable again.

 

Adam didn’t try to break their embrace, Shiro would do that whenever he saw fit. He needed it too, more than he initially thought. It was like a dull ache that had settled in his limbs and wrapped around his body like a cloak, had finally been lifted. Like he had been holding his breath for the entire day and now was the time he finally got to exhale.

 

Shiro carefully took a step back and smiled at him.

“Better?” Adam asked. He didn’t cringe at the abundance of love in his voice anymore when he spoke to Shiro, it had become an unmovable fact now, a certainty as established as the laws of physics. The earth wandered around the sun, there were more stars in the sky than he could possibly count and he loved Shiro so much that it was painful. 

 

“With you?” Shiro gripped his hand, briefly squeezed and dropped it, “Always.”

 

And just like that their world seemed a little bit more okay.

 

They spent their evening slow and deliberate, glued together like they had been separated, learning and relearning each other’s love language and returning each compliment, each gesture with one of their own.

 

They settled down on their tiny couch, that creaked a little because he had refused to listen to Shiro’s instructions when assembling it, and watched reruns of their favourite Disney films. Their popcorn had already been eaten and Shiro was more asleep than not lazily blinking up at Adam from where his head laid in his lap.

 

Adam was slowly caressing his face his movements more instinct than actual thought, like his hands couldn’t bear not touching Shiro, as he hummed along to Louis Armstrong’s rendition of  _ La vie en rose.  _ It wasn’t perfect, his voice didn’t carry as much weight as it should, was more breath than actual sound but when he looked down to Shiro… his heart stopped.

 

As cheesy as it sounded there was no other way to describe what happened. The question looming in his mind rose to an echoing boom as Shiro stared at him like Adam had not only hung the up the moon but the sun and the stars too. He faltered, a note already rising in his throat came to a halt, remained nothing more than a breath that had lost its intention, as Shiro shot up and arranged himself so that he could face him.

 

“What ?” Adam asked, completely startled. Shiro smiled at his as bright as the sun and as wide as the universe and asked what had been sitting on Adam chest weeks and months now.

 

“Marry me?” He conjured up a ring out of seemingly nowhere. It was beautifully crafted, a ring of polished gold, circular and never-ending.

 

Adam didn’t say yes.

 

He tackled him off the couch and crashed his lips into his. As they broke off, gasping and eyes clinging to each other and grinning like fools.

 

Then his thoughts caught up to him and he broke out in hysterical laughter. He sat there, straddling Shiro’s waist and completely losing it. Shiro looked up to him and frowned. 

 

“What?” But Adam only reached back into his pocket and pulled out a satin-clad little box. 

 

“I can’t believe you were faster than me,” Adam whispered, shaking his head. It took Shiro a solid minute to realise what he was talking about and tears began to rise in his eyes. 

 

“I still want to do this right though,” Adam pulled Shiro up by his shoulders and scooted back until he was sitting in his lap, “Takashi Shirogane—“

 

The tears in Shiro’s eyes were now falling freely as he stared at him with love and adoration. Adam’s voice broke, overwhelmed by the feelings filling his heart to the brim. But he kept going anyway, asking was so much easier now that he knew that his answer would echo all of his hopes and dreams. 

 

“— will you grant me the honour of becoming my husband?”

 

Shiro whispered a broken yes, torn open by tears and sobs and pressed his lips to Adam’s. He tasted like salt and they were smiling way too much for it to be a proper kiss. But it was a little crooked a little off-centre like they were. 

 

They parted red-cheeked and beaming. Adam reached down and slipped the ring onto Shiro’s finger. It fit perfectly. 

 

And just like that, with the credits of Wall-e rolling in the background and popcorn scattered around them, a pair of boyfriends had turned into a pair of fiancés. 

 

It truly was perfect. 

  
  


**_Winter_ **

_ winter forced our love into dormancy and left us aching and tired _

 

His heart was being torn in two and soon his body would follow. Shiro looked down at the results from his last medical assessment. The letter weighed heavy in his hand, more like a death sentence than a report, more damnation than information.

 

_ He was getting worse. _

 

Not immediately, not at once but slowly and surely. His strength was dwindling, his body was decaying. Those thoughts forced themselves into his mind, like wasn’t already crammed enough, there weren’t enough thins slowly but surely eating away at his happiness.

Shiro sighed and unlocked the door to his and Adam’s shared apartment. He dumped the medical report onto the chest of drawers that stood right next to the door and made his way to their living room.

 

Adam rose when he heard him enter and walked up to him. “Hey love,” he whispered and caught Shiro’s face between his palms. Two words and simple gesture and Shiro melted into a soft puddle of goo as tension─at least for a moment─ released its iron grip on his shoulders.

 

Shiro turned his head and pressed a soft kiss to Adam’s right palm. His heart ached by the thought that he would have to shatter this bubble of intimacy. That he would have to bring up an old topic they had been shouting about for weeks.

 

“What is it?” Adam frowned at him and pulled his hands back.

“I talked to Iverson about the mission. Or rather ─ listened to him shout at the entire commission about how irresponsible it is to let such a physically unstable pilot be part of this mission.” 

Shiro pressed the balls of his hands against his eyes. A headache born and raised by hours of dispute was pulsing between his temples and he felt his medical assessment loom over him like a cloud of dread. 

 

“I thought you said bringing them your medical assessment would be enough to convince them?” Adam adjusted his glasses and sat down on the couch behind him. 

 

Shiro bit his lips. He knew he would have to talk about it eventually, they didn’t … do secrets. Not with one another. He sighed and scraped together whatever courage might have been left at the bottom of his heart. 

 

“I… I─ I’ve been getting worse. The doctors said I can only hope to maintain my peak condition for a few more years, a decade at best and then…”  _ It would be over. _ He could bring himself to utter the words, to speak into existence what had been haunting him ever since he joined the Galaxy Garrison.

 

“Iverson says I’ll be putting the entire mission at risk. I won’t be able to perform at my best, that I can’t be trusted with the lives of my crew.” The anger in his chest rose along with the pitch of his voice. It was an encore of his earlier feelings, a new face the shame, that had flooded his body when Iverson began to speak to Admiral Sanda had given, itself.

 

“Maybe he has a point.” To hear doubt he had so desperately trying to silence inside himself flung back at him─all words vanished from his throat, all thought abandoned his mind.

 

“Shiro… Takashi, you’ve done so much. You’ve broken every record there is. You will go down in history as on the best pilots of all times. What do you have left to prove?” 

 

Adam couldn’t possibly be doing this. “What do I have left to─? Adam, you know how important this is for me!” Shiro took a step back like Adam’s words had physically slapped him.

 

“Well, how important am I to you? How important is your life to you?” Adam jumped to his feet and met him at eye level.

 

“You said you were going to support, you promised you’d stay at my side!” Shiro felt the tell-tale tingle of a cough building in his chest but he suppressed it. He was heaving now, the memory of Adam lying next to him in the sand clouding his mind.

 

_ I’ll be there to support you along the way.  _ A lie spun out of silk and coloured in honey.

 

“I won’t stand by you and watch you get yourself killed!” Adam’s voice surged, driven by pain and desperation, but Shiro’s own feelings poisoned any understanding he might have had.

“I’m dying no matter what! I only have a few years left at best and I─”  _ don’t need you to see me decay, to suffer alongside me while I walk into my end.  _ His voice had broken and shattered at the truth that had lodged itself in mind, that resonated inside his bones.

He was dying and Adam didn’t deserve to see it.

 

He deserved so much better.

 

Adam took a long hard look at Shiro’s face and the sighed. The tension in his shoulders crumbled like a house of cards. “Fine, this is it, then.”

 

Shiro wanted to say something, wanted to beg him not to let him go, beg him not to leave him. But his voice remained silent, his mind remained blank.

 

“Go on then, fly to the stars you crave to see so desperately. But don’t expect me to still be here when you come back.”

  
  


**_Spring_ **

_ but another spring will come and our love will be reborn _

 

Adam heard the news,  _ pilot error, pilot error, pilot error  _ ringing in his head, and his world broke clean in half.

 

But it hadn’t been the end, it hadn’t been over for the two of them. The stars aligned themselves, fate pulled at their strings. They conspired together and wrote the happy ending to their love story when Shiro had been far estranged and Adam too hopeless to do so themselves.

 

His heart stopped when the clouds parted and majestic lions ascended from the sky like the gods themselves. The black one, by far the biggest and leader of the pride, opened and shattered Adam’s equilibrium he had regained piece by piece.

 

Because who came out was  _ Shiro.  _ White-haired, one-armed, yes, but still Shiro.

 

Adam sprinted down the stairs of the Garrison and barrelled into him full force. He burst into tears when his hands met solid muscle that immediately hugged him back. Still completely baffled and disbelieving he tore himself free and looked Shiro in the eyes.

 

The same familiar twinkle, the same warmth he remembered.

 

“What happened to you?” Adam breathed out, his words broken up by sobs.

 

Shiro shot him a soft smile and gripped him tighter. “It’s kind of a long story,” the smile didn’t hide the tremble in his voice,  “But I’ll tell you everything if you’ll have me?”

 

And Adam fell in love all over again.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! Welcome at the end (u made it!) I hope u liked this lil thing. These two idiots just make me so soft,,,,
> 
> To anyone who read my other fic And yet the Sun Will Rise again: I'm currently working on chap 4 but it's progressing very slowly. Also, exam season is coming so i'm very sorry if u don't hear from me in a while.
> 
> Yell at me on my tumblr in the meantime: cxnfiscated.tumblr.com or my twitter: @cxnfiscated (sticking to the branding here heh)


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